The encyclical letter Laudato Si is available here on the Vatican website.
141. Economic growth, for its part, tends to produce predictable reactions and a certain standardization with the aim of simplifying procedures and reducing costs. This suggests the need for an “economic ecology” capable of appealing to a broader vision of reality.
What does Pope Francis mean by this term?
The protection of the environment is in fact “an integral part of the development process and cannot be considered in isolation from it”.[Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (14 June 1992), Principle 4] We urgently need a humanism capable of bringing together the different fields of knowledge, including economics, in the service of a more integral and integrating vision.
Humanism is not a bad word.
Today, the analysis of environmental problems cannot be separated from the analysis of human, family, work-related and urban contexts, nor from how individuals relate to themselves, which leads in turn to how they relate to others and to the environment. There is an interrelation between ecosystems and between the various spheres of social interaction, demonstrating yet again that “the whole is greater than the part”.[Evangelii Gaudium 237]
Thoughts?
Catholic Sensibility 